What is volunteering?

Volunteering is a personal commitment to help the less fortunate in our society. This commitment means a sacrifice of time and energy.

Responsibilities of a volunteer

A general guide for a responsible volunteer is one that:

1. able to set his own objectives in voluntary work and priorities in life;
2. knows the amount of time he can realistically commit himself to do
    voluntary work;
3. takes on only the number of duties that he can manage effectively
4. knows and works towards the project's objectives;
5. sets realistic milestones and goals for the trainees;
6. plans and carries out the group programmes with full commitment;
7. informs his fellow volunteers / group leader in advance when he would be absent and
    ensure that the group programme would carry out smoothly during his absence;
8. reviews his programmes and his trainees' performance regularly.

Volunteer Recruitment

We are currently in need of committed and passionate volunteers. If you are interested in helping the IDs, please feel free to contact us.

Join Us As A Volunteer! Contact our Volunteer Administrator for more information.

We operate every Saturday, 2:30pm to 5:30pm.

The process of aging received a lot of scientific attention in the last few years and many depressing myths, assumptions about old age, have to be challenged as a result. Growing, and being, old involves much more than bodily changes: it involves intellectual and emotional functioning, and social relationships and how society regards its older members and why.

Physiological Changes
The majority of people with severe learning difficulties do not have major life-shortening disabilities: there are innumerable causes of mental handicap, some with physical effects, most without. Older people who are mentally handicapped are subject to the whole range of medical problems, which appear with increasing age: hearing loss, cataracts, overweight, raised blood pressure and heart disease, cancer, arthritis, for example.

Intellectual Changes
It is a fact that 95% of the ordinary population are not severely demented even by 75 and even 80% of those over 80 are not severely affected. It is possible that with the exception of one special group (Down’s syndrome), older people with mental handicap do not differ from the general population. But it has been recognized for a long time that people with Down’s syndrome are very likely to age prematurely in every way including their intellectual functioning.

Emotional Changes
Adults with mental handicap have, as they grow older, a rope of life which is usually thin and impoverished. Their parents experienced much rejection by society, a great sense of guilt about their child’s condition, and no skilled advice. The parent recognized that society did not want their child, and that they carried the responsibility quite alone. Perhaps the biggest deficit in the personal development of most intellectually disabled people is in the field of social and relationship skills. Loneliness is usually a major problem in their lives, but finding "a friend" for them is not the total answer. Having a friend is not the same as being a friend: this involves a two-way process that does not develop naturally in people who have become used only to taking what others give. Learning to build and sustain such two-way relationships involving consideration of each other’s feelings and wishes takes skilled guidance and opportunities. This is a life experience to be undertaken from childhood onwards, and many people of normal intelligence find it very difficult to catch up later.

Extracted from Chapter 15 of People with Mental Handicap by J. Hattersley